More than 4 million acres of marine life habitat have become a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the lives of fish and other marine animals, NOAA said on Thursday. Although this is an annual issue in the Gulf, this year’s is far larger than anticipated, with an area roughly the size of New Jersey.

The dead zone is an area where there is very little to no oxygen, a situation known as hypoxia, that NOAA says can kill fish and marine life. In June, NOAA predicted an area of 5,827 square miles, roughly the size of Connecticut. But on Thursday, the agency said it has grown to roughly 6,705 square miles, equating to more than 4 million acres of habitat and more than 1,000 square miles larger than anticipated. 

It’s the 12th-largest dead zone the agency has recorded in 38 years of measurement — and well above a goal set out by researchers to reduce the area. 

According to NOAA, scientists have made it a goal to reduce the average area to fewer than 1,900 square miles by 2035 to help improve the health of the marine ecosystem. As it stands, the five-year average is now nearly 4,300 square miles, more than twice as large as that target. 

“It’s critical that we measure this region’s hypoxia as an indicator of ocean health, particularly under a changing climate and potential intensification of storms and increases in precipitation and runoff,” Nicole LeBoeuf of NOAA’s National Ocean Service said in a news release. 

The original estimate for the dead zone’s size was based on discharge and runoff from the Mississippi River, which leads into the Gulf. When there are excessive nutrients in the Gulf, it can create an overgrowth of algae that then die and decompose, sucking out oxygen. Without enough oxygen in the water, animals that can leave, will, while others can die. 

The Union of Concerned Scientists said Thursday that “policymakers aren’t doing enough to address the root causes” of these events. Last week, Karen Perry Stillerman, deputy director of the group, said that a larger dead zone this year could be because of a three-part “perfect storm”: excessive fertilizer use, poor farmland management and heavier rainfall caused by climate change. 

“Even an average dead zone … is not okay. It’s damaging to the Gulf ecosystem and the people in the region who depend on fishing and seafood for their livelihoods,” she wrote in her blog post. “A 2021 UCS analysis put a price tag on that damage: up to $2.4 billion every year since 1980.”

While the EPA created the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force in 1997 to try and help the problem, Perry Stillerman said that the task force has yet to meet its targets to alleviate the situation. In fact, she said, “they are failing badly,” pointing to NOAA measurements that show there has only been a single year since measurements began when the dead zone grew to a size smaller than the set goal. 

She believes that tackling agricultural practices so that both farmers and the environment can benefit is essential. 

“It’s not far-fetched to think that with smarter policies, we could have much smaller dead zones to measure in future summers,” she said.